Session 9b
We –Lynn, Lerion, Bastion and Sizzles- were hired to investigate a report of crusading goblins after a scout told the constable about it. Two days out from Taleah we found a ravenged goblin village and a single survivor. This survivor –Mezzak- had lost most of his memory and, after some prodding of both him and Sizzles, he took us to a tower that seemed to be of dwarven make rather than goblin. Of special note was a large black magic rock, held in a claw-like ornament on top of the tower. On the first floor of the tower we encountered a fissure filled with a tentacle monster, probably the result of two interacting spells striking an otherwise normal creature. Lynn recognised it as a magic animal. On either side of the fissure were red leavers which, after a bit of experimentation, we discovered controlled a bridge across the gap. Through Lerion’s invisibility and floating magic we were able to activate a bridge and cross safely –though Sizzles, too, managed to cross the fissure and would have pulled the lever, had Lerion not already been there. On the other side of the room, a staircase led down and away. Down the stairs, the next room wasn’t directly under the first but more to the side, taller than the few feet we’d descended. It appeared to be a shrine. The main floor held 4 statues of dwarven knights, each holding a circle of coloured glass, two animal skulls on sticks, two goblin-made statues of guards, a goblin made shrine and a clear, deep pool. The gallery along the wall was filled with dwarven statues and a single gargoyle. The far wall, behind the goblin shrine, held pictographs and a text which Sizzles eventually translated for us. Lerion and Sizzles stealth’d their way around and, after the discovery of the gargoyle, a surprise attack was planned. This plan failed the moment Bastion set foot into the room, as the sound alerted the gargoyle. Lerion, still invisible and floating, managed to knock the gargoyle out of the air. By this time, the animal skulls had started glowing an ominous red and a countdown had started. Sizzles, after swallowing a potion, hulked out and did heavy damage to the gargoyle, though none of the other attacks by Lynn and Bastion seemed to be very effective. The two guard statues by the shrine started moving towards the melee. After close to twenty seconds the third animal skull in the shrine blew a stream of fire out into the room. A few highlights of the fight were the takedown of the two animal skulls –which had no discernible effect- Sizzles, Lynn and Bastion doing little damage to the gargoyle due to abysmally terrible attack rolls. Sizzles scared off a guard statue that was then burned in its place by Lerion, wielding the fire breathing skull. After we finally defeated the gargoyle, the last statue was quickly destroyed. Upon closer inspection, the glass circles turned out to be pressure sensitive and, when pressed at the same time, revealed a hallway with a staircase leading upward. In the hallway we found rotten supplies, a wooden crown with yellow gems that seemed to match the green begemd crown Mezzak wears, a masterwork dagger stuck in a rabbit, a few gold coins and a black banner with two dragons –one red breathing fire, one white breathing ice- like a scrap we found in the village. We dunked Mezzak in the pool, which not only cleaned him somewhat but also seemed to restore some of his memory. Mezzak told us that he had been held captive higher up in this tower, that he would fully regain his memories if we could retrieve the stone that was missing from his crown. Lynn grabbed the second crown and the dagger, left the cash to the others. Meanwhile –ish, Sizzles explained that the text told of a goblin queen who vanquished a terrible wizard and then she split into two beings –one goblin, one dwarf? Up the stairs was a study. The room was roughly halfway up the tower, round and kind of old. The most prominent features were a desk (containing a letter, a wand of healing with 4 charges and a book on alchemy) and a magic circle with a green stone in the middle. Lerion and Bastion judged that the floor would collapse after removing the stone so the party –sans Lerion- moved across the room to the staircase. Lerion removed the rock, the earth inside the circle –but not the floor around it- dropped away and our entryway slammed shut. We put the green rock back in Mezzak’s crown and he remembered what’d happened to his village. Two goblins had come to their village and tried to rouse the goblins to help fight a demon and while many of the inhabitants were convinced, not everyone wanted to go. Mezzak got locked up in the tower while the other people who wanted to stay were slaughtered. The stairs led to the top floor of the tower. This room had two windows on the far wall, bracketing a desk. In the middle of the floor was a rug and a dwarven skeleton in mage-robes lay on the rug. The moment we stepped foot in the room, each of us felt our toes start to petrify. Lynn attempted to shoot out a window, but shot Mezzak instead. He was –surprisingly- unhurt by this. Then Lerion opened a pit right underneath the skeleton and dropped it out of the tower. The fight continued and with some improvised bungee jumping equipment, inconvenient looting, vertical range and more movement than could reasonably expected from Bastion we did beat the wizard back. The finishing blow knocked the skeleton off the roof and, upon landing, the vial in his staff shattered. After a long rest, during which Lerion prepared a few uses of Rope Trick, Mend and unseen servant, we retrieved all the loot from the tower room. Including the chest that Bastion had found during the fight, we found a rug that would’ve been worth 200 gp if not for the hole, a holy symbol of Austri and a faded text with some sacred writings of Austri. The orb on the tower-top was lazurite and we elected to leave it as it is, because the tentacle beast would, most likely, scare off most of those who would seek to use it for harm. The letter we found in the study later turned out to explain, among other things, that the rock on the tower was once a bright white beacon but one day turned dark and the two wizards of the tower would try to cast spells to fix it. From the state of the tower when we found it, it is assumed that they failed. -Summary as Lynn remembers it